Pedro Calmon

Pedro Calmon
File:Pedro Calmon.tiff
Minister of Education
In office 18 June 1959 – 16 June 1960
President	Juscelino Kubitschek
Preceded by	Clóvis Salgado da Gama
Succeeded by	José Pedro da Costa (interim)
In office 4 August 1950 – 31 January 1951
President	Gaspar Dutra
Preceded by	Eduardo Rios Filho (interim)
Succeeded by	Ernesto Simões Filho
Personal details
Born	(1902-12-23)23 December 1902 Amargosa, Bahia, Brazil
Died	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Alma mater	Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Pedro Calmon Notable work História da Civilização Brasileira (1932)

Pedro Calmon Moniz de Bittencourt (12 December 1902 – 16 June 1985) was a Brazilian professor, politician, historian, biographer, essayist and orator.

Biography

Calmon was born in Amargosa, Bahia, the children of Pedro Calmon Freire de Bittencourt and Maria Romana Moniz de Aragão Calmon de Bittencourt. He attended primary and secondary school at Colégio Antônio Vieira and Ginásio da Bahia, from 1914 to 1919. In 1920, he entered the Faculty of Law of Bahia, where he studied for two years. In 1922, summoned by his godfather Miguel Calmon, he moved to Rio de Janeiro to act as secretary for the Commission for the Promotion of the Congresses of the Centenary of Independence. He continued his studies at the University of Rio de Janeiro, graduating in December 1924.

From the academic benches, he showed a special aptitude for historical studies. He was always linked to higher education, occupying both administrative and public positions. As private secretary to the Minister of Agriculture in the Bernardes government, he qualified, in 1925, in an exam for curator of the National Historical Museum. In addition to carrying out extensive administrative reform there, he created the chair of History of Brazilian Civilization, for which he wrote a book with the same title. He made his debut on the tribune of the Instituto Histórico, in 1926, as a speaker at the celebration of the third centenary of the emancipation of Bahia from Dutch rule, being elected an effective member of the Institute in 1931. He was its official speaker from 1938 to 1968 and its president since 1968, becoming a distinguished member of the institute.

He entered politics, as state deputy of Bahia, at the time of the Bahian governments of Góis Calmon and Vital Soares (1927 to 1930). Elected federal deputy in 1935 (from the parliamentary minority at the time), he linked his name to the first protective law, in Bahia, of cultural heritage. He returned to political activity in 1950, as Minister of Education and Health (1950-1951) under President Dutra.

His first legal work, Property Law, dates back to 1926, initially intended for a doctoral thesis. In 1933 he published books on emperor Pedro I, Gomes Carneiro and the Marquess of Abrantes; in 1935 he published the first volume of the Social History of Brazil, works that enabled him to apply for the Brazilian Academy of Letters. In 1929, he won an Academy Award for his historical novel The Secondhand Treasure.

In 1934, he became a lecturer in Constitutional Public Law at the National Law Faculty of the University of Brazil through a competition and, in 1939, became a professor at the same Faculty of which he was director for ten years (1938-1948). Vice-Rector in 1948, he ascended to the Rectorate of the university, at whose head he was until 1966, that is, for 18 years. In 1935 he chaired the History of Brazilian Civilization chair at the Federal District University; he was a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University, since it was founded, and at the Faculty of Philosophy Santa Úrsula in Rio de Janeiro. In 1955, he won the chair of History of Brazil at Colégio Pedro II. His competition thesis was the analysis of unpublished documentation about the silver mines.

For his activity in higher education, he received the title of Professor Emeritus at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; Doctor honoris causa from the Universities of Coimbra, Quito, New York, San Marcos and the National University of Mexico; and honorary professor at the University of Bahia.

He was official speaker at the Instituto dos Advogados do Brasil, in two terms; representative of Ecuador at the Pan American Conference on Geography and History, held in Rio de Janeiro in December 1932; delegate from Brazil to the Inter-American Conference in Mexico, in 1945, and to the Interacademic Conference for the Orthographic Agreement, in Lisbon, in 1945.

Pedro Calmon was a member of the Geographical Society of Rio de Janeiro and of the Historical Institutes of several Brazilian states; corresponding member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and the Portuguese Academy of History; honorary member of the Geographic Society of Lisbon, the Royal Spanish Academy and the Royal Academy of History of Spain, and corresponding member of cultural and historical societies in several Latin American countries. He was a member of the Federal Council of Culture, of the editorial board of the Army Library and director of the Afrânio Peixoto Institute of Portuguese Studies, at the Liceu Literário Português, since 1947.

He was the third occupant of Chair 16 of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, elected on April 16, 1936, succeeding Félix Pacheco and received by Academician Gustavo Barroso on October 10, 1936. He received Academician Rodrigo Octavio Filho.